Abu Ghraib General Lambastes Bush
Administration

I had been
hesitant to speak out before because this Administration is
so vindictive. But now I will ... Anybody who confronts this
Administration or Rumsfeld or the Pentagon with a true
assessment, they find themselves either out of a job, out of
their positions, fired, relieved or chastised. Their career
comes to an end.- Janis Karpinski, interview with
Marjorie Cohn, August 3, 2005

Army
Reserve Brigadier General Janis Karpinski was in charge of
the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq when the now famous
torture photographs were taken in fall of 2003. She was
reprimanded and demoted to Colonel for her failure to
properly supervise the prison guards. Karpinski is the
highest ranking officer to be sanctioned for the
mistreatment of prisoners. On August 3, 2005, I
interviewed Janis Karpinski. In the most comprehensive
public statement she has made to date, Karpinski
deconstructs the entire United States military operation in
Iraq with some astonishing revelations.

When
Karpinski got to Abu Ghraib, "there was a completely
different story than what we were being told in the United
States. It was out of control. There weren't enough
soldiers. Nobody had the right equipment. They were driving
around in unarmored vehicles, some of them without doors ...
So, knowing that they were ill-equipped and ill-prepared,
they pushed them out anyway, because those two three-stars
wanted their fifteen minutes of fame, I suppose."

Karpinski said that General Shinseki briefed Rumsfeld that
"he can't win this war, if they insist on invading Iraq, he
can't win this war with less than 300,000 soldiers."
Rumsfeld reportedly ordered Shinseki to go back and find a
way to do this with 125,000 to 130,000, but Shinseki came
back and said they couldn't do the job with that number.
"What did Rumsfeld do?" Karpinski asked rhetorically. "If
you can't agree with me, I'm going to find somebody who can.
He made Shinseki a lame duck, for all practical purposes,
and brought in Schoomaker. And Schoomaker got it. He said,
'Oh yes sir, we can do this with 125,000.'"

Karpinski
says she did not know about the torture occurring in
Cellblocks 1-A and 1-B at Abu Ghraib because it took place
at night. She didn't live at Abu Ghraib, and nobody was
permitted to travel at night due to the dangerous road
conditions. The first she heard about the torture was on
January 12, 2004. She was never allowed to speak to the
people who had worked on the night shift. She "was told by
Colonel Warren, the JAG officer for General Sanchez, that
they weren't assigned to me, that they were not under my
control, and I really had no right to see them."

When
Karpinski inquired, "What's this about photographs?" the
sergeant replied, "Ma'am, we've heard something about
photographs, but I have no idea. Nobody has any details, and
Ma'am, if anybody knows, nobody is talking." When Karpinski
asked to see the log books, the sergeant told her that the
Criminal Investigation Division had taken everything except
for something on a pole outside the little office they were
using.

"It was a memorandum signed by Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld, authorizing a short list, maybe 6 or 8
techniques: use of dogs; stress positions; loud music;
deprivation of food; keeping the lights on, those kinds of
things," Karpinski said. "And then a handwritten message
over to the side that appeared to be the same handwriting as
the signature, and that signature was Secretary Rumsfeld's.
And it said, 'Make sure this happens' with two exclamation
points. And that was the only thing they had. Everything
else had been confiscated."

Karpinski tried to get
information, but "nobody knew anything, nobody - at least,
that's what they were claiming. The Company Commander,
Captain Reese, was tearful in my office and repeatedly told
me he knew nothing about it, knew nothing about it,"
Karpinski said. But in a later plea bargain he entered into
after the Taguba Report came out, "Captain Reese said that
not only did he know about it, but he was told not to report
it to his chain of command, and he was told that by Colonel
Pappas. And he claimed that he saw General Sanchez out there
on several occasions witnessing the torture of some of the
security detainees."

The first time Karpinski got any
clarification about the photographs was January 23, 2004.
The criminal investigator, Colonel Marcelo, came into
Karpinski's office and showed her the pictures. "When I saw
the pictures I was floored," Karpinski said. "Really, the
world was spinning out of control when I saw those pictures,
because it was so far beyond and outside of what I imagined.
I thought that maybe some soldiers had taken some pictures
of prisoners behind barbed wire or in their cell or
something like that. I couldn't imagine anything like what I
saw in those photographs."

Marcelo told her, "Ma'am,
I'm supposed to tell you after you see the photographs that
General Sanchez wants to see you in his office." So
Karpinski went over to see Sanchez. She said that "before I
even saw the photographs, I was preparing words to say in a
press conference - to be up front, to be honest about this,
that an investigation is ongoing and there are some
allegations of detainee abuse."

But Sanchez told
Karpinski, "'No, absolutely not. You are not to discuss this
with anyone.' And I should have known then," she said, "and
I know that Sanchez was hopeful for a four-star promotion
even then, in January of 2004. And I thought it had probably
most to do with the election coming up in November 2004, and
that this could really move the Administration out of the
White House if it was exploited. So naively, I just thought,
you know, they're going to let this investigation go and
they're going to handle it the way it should be handled."

Karpinski said, however, "The truth has been
uncovered, but it's been suffocated and it has not been
released with the results of the investigation." She added,
"McClellan and Rumsfeld can get up on their high horse and
say that there've been no fewer than 15 investigations that
were conducted. But every one of those investigations is
under the control of the Secretary of Defense. And every one
of those investigations is run and led by a person who can
lose their job under Rumsfeld's fist."

"We're never
going to know the truth until they do an independent
commission or look into this independently," Karpinski
maintains. "This is about instructions delivered with full
authority and knowledge of the Secretary of Defense and
probably Cheney. I don't know if the President was involved
or not. I don't care. All I know is, those instructions were
communicated from the Secretary of Defense's office, from
the Pentagon, through Cambone, through Miller, to Abu
Ghraib."

Karpinski describes what happened when
General Geoffrey Miller arrived at Abu Ghraib: "The most
pronounced difference was when Miller came to visit. He came
right after Rumsfeld's visit ... And he said that he was
going to use a template from Guantánamo Bay to 'Gitm-oize'
the operations out at Abu Ghraib."

"These torture
techniques were being implemented and used down at
Guantánamo Bay and, of course, now we have lots of
statements that say they were used in Afghanistan as well,"
Karpinski said. Although Miller has sworn he was just an
"advisor," Miller told Karpinski he wanted Abu Ghraib.
Karpinski replied, "Abu Ghraib is not mine to give to you.
It belongs to Ambassador Bremer. It is going to be turned
over to the Iraqis." Miller replied, "No it is not. I want
that facility and Rick Sanchez said I can have any facility
I want." Karpinski said, "Miller obviously had the full
authority of somebody, you know, likely Cambone or Rumsfeld
in Washington, DC."

Miller's representative, General
Fast, turned the prison over to the Military Intelligence
brigade for complete command and control, Karpinski said.
"There was no coordination with me or Colonel Pappas. There
was no discussion about chain of command."

Abu Ghraib
housed primarily Iraqi criminals. Although many of the
"security detainees" were kept at Abu Ghraib, most of the
interrogations took place at a higher-value detention
facility in Baghdad, according to Karpinski.

The Army
discriminates against the reservists in general, and female
officers in particular, Karpinski said. "It's really a good
old boys' network," she said. "Come hell or high water,
they're going to maintain the status quo." While she was
made the scapegoat for the torture at Abu Ghraib, Karpinski
said, no one above her in the chain of command has been
reprimanded.

Karpinski reveals that there was "no
sustainment plan" because "there were a lot of contractors -
US contractors exclusively - who realized they could make a
lot of money in Iraq." At the Coalition Provisional
Authority, Karpinski "saw corruption like I've never seen
before - millions of dollars just being pocketed by
contractors. Everything was on a cash basis at that time,"
she said. "You take a request down - literally, you take a
request to the Finance Office. If the Pay Officer recognized
your face and you were asking for $450,000 to pay a
contractor for work, they would pay you in cash: $450,000.
Out of control."

Speaking about the war, Karpinski
said, "Iraq was a huge country, and when you have people
largely saying now, 'He may have been a dictator, but we
were better under Saddam,' this Administration needs to take
notice. And at some point you have to say, 'Stop the train,
because it's completely derailed. How do we fix it?' But in
an effort to do that, you have to admit that you made a few
mistakes, and this Administration is not willing to admit
any mistakes whatsoever."

Janis Karpinski is no
longer in the military. She is writing a book that will be
published by Miramax in November. In April, she received a
form letter from the Chief of the Army Reserves, "warning me
- warning me - about speaking about Abu Ghraib, and that
everything was still under investigation." She then got "a
letter saying that he understands that I'm writing a book
and I should submit the transcript for review."

"And
my lawyer responded simply by telling him that I was a
private citizen and I don't fall under the same
requirements, which he had to acknowledge, because that's
true. I'm not ignorant, and I'm not going to reveal any
classified information in anything I write," Karpinski said,
"but I don't need to, because the truth is the truth, and it
doesn't have to be classified. It is definitely staggering,
but the truth is the truth."

****************

Janis Karpinski:
Exclusive Interview

Army Reserve
Brigadier General Janis Karpinski was in charge of Abu
Ghraib prison in Iraq when the infamous torture photographs
were taken. She was reprimanded and demoted to Colonel for
her failure to properly supervise the prison guards.
Karpinski is the highest ranking officer to be sanctioned
for the mistreatment of prisoners. This exclusive interview
by t r u t h o u t writer Marjorie Cohn is the most
comprehensive public statement Karpinski has made to
date.

MC: General Karpinski, thank you for
agreeing to talk to me today.

JK: I had been hesitant to
speak out before because this Administration is so
vindictive. But now I will.

Despite years of this
pronouncement that it's an "army of one," we reservists were
absolutely discriminated against. The people at the senior
levels of the reserve components, the Chief of the Army
Reserve, for example, a three-star, never made so much as
one phone call, never exchanged one word with me in all of
this. Twice, my lawyer requested a meeting with him
face-to-face in Washington, DC, and he declined. He denied
both of those requests.

It's really a good old boys'
network. Come hell or high water, they're going to maintain
the status quo. They all live by each other in Fort Myers,
or near Fort Myers. I'm sure that they have these
cigar-smoking sessions where they're all patting each other
on the back that they got another female out of the way,
before I was able to get higher up in the senior levels. But
I always expected that reservists would find support from
their own component, and not be tagged as bad apples. For
myself, there was not any support whatsoever.

I just
find it incredible that the system - the Pentagon and the
Judicial System - can continue to keep those soldiers in
jail when there are simply volumes of documents and
information that is emerging, and continues to emerge, that
says exactly what one, in particular, Graner, was saying all
along: that he was ordered to do these things by the
Military Intelligence people and the interrogators, the
contract interrogators. And there's more and more
information to support that. The recommendation was that
General Miller from Gitmo be reprimanded and his four-star
commander from SOUTHCOM said no, I don't agree with that.

MC: And General Geoffrey Miller was the one who was
supposed to transplant those interrogation and torture
techniques from Guantánamo to Abu Ghraib?

JK: That's
correct. There are sworn statements, not only from the
interrogators and the FBI personnel down at Guantánamo Bay
prior to even a thought of using Abu Ghraib for a prison
location. These torture techniques were being implemented
and used down at Guantánamo Bay and, of course, now we have
lots of statements that say they were used in Afghanistan as
well.

In late August and September of 2003, Miller
comes to visit, then everything starts to change, to include
transferring the responsibility for Abu Ghraib over to the
Military Intelligence people altogether. And it's been
substantiated through an investigation that these torture
practices were developed and implemented down in Guantánamo
Bay and then they were imported to Abu Ghraib.

They're holding these soldiers responsible for one time on
the night shift coming up with these pranks. Give me a
break! It's so unfair to continue to blame those soldiers.
You know, I would be the first one to say to anybody that
Graner and Fredericks, as noncommissioned officers - they
crossed the line. Graner punched a prisoner in the chest so
hard, to get him under control, the guy passed out.
Fredericks stepped on feet and hands and everything else.
And they didn't report what they knew were violations of the
Geneva Conventions. They didn't report those things to the
chain of command.

Now I've been held accountable for
that, but never once, Marjorie, never once have I had an
opportunity to speak to any of those soldiers, because
before I was even aware that there was an investigation
going on or that there were photographs or anything else,
those soldiers were removed from their positions at Abu
Ghraib and taken away to Sanchez's headquarters. And I was
never allowed to speak to them. Never once.

MC: Why
do you think you're the highest officer who's been punished?

JK: Well, I don't know how else to say it, but I
think I check a lot of blocks. Before the war got underway,
before 9/11, Rumsfeld's plan was to downsize the military -
fewer, faster, more trained in Special Operations, never
have to fight on two fronts again. He wanted to downsize the
overall military. He wanted to return control of the
military to the civilian sector. And the division
commanders, at least in the Army, were opposed to that. And
there were very selfish reasons for their opposition. If you
were a division commander, you could pay back favors that
were done for you, perhaps, to get you promoted or to put
you into positions. You repay other graduates of the
military academy - those kinds of things - by appointing
them to command positions in your own division. So the more
toys you have to play with, the bigger your division and the
more likely that you're going to be at the front of the pack
when your promotion comes up. So that's history.

Rumsfeld wanted to downsize the military, and the component
chiefs were opposed to it. He sent them all back to their
offices, and said, "Find a way to do this." The only
component that came up with a solution was the Marine Corps.
Then he sent the Air Force, the Navy and the Army back to
the drawing board, and then 9/11 happened. So they got a
reprieve. And it was up to them to prove how important it
was that they still needed big divisions and lots of
equipment and all that other stuff.

Here's Shinseki
briefing Rumsfeld that he can't win this war, if they insist
on invading Iraq, he can't win this war with less than
300,000 soldiers. I wasn't there to hear it, but allegedly
Rumsfeld said to Shinseki: go back and find a way to do this
with 125,000 to 150,000. Well, Shinseki came back again and
said: Mr. Secretary we can't do it with that number. You
need 300,000.

What did Rumsfeld do? If you can't
agree with me, I'm going to find somebody who can. He made
Shinseki a lame duck, for all practical purposes, and
brought in Schoomaker. And Schoomaker got it. He said, "Oh
yes sir, we can do this with 125,000."

Well, none of
them had to go fight the war. None of them had to deploy and
manage this small number. And everybody was under the
impression that this war was going to be over very quickly.
So there was no sustainment plan. And I'm selected for
Brigadier General. I had a choice: I could either wait for
my unit to come back to the United States and join the men,
or I could deploy. I wanted to be with my unit in the field.
I thought it would be a great opportunity to see how they
would operate under field conditions in a theater of war.

When I got there, there was a completely different
story than what we were being told in the United States. It
was out of control. There weren't enough soldiers. Nobody
had the right equipment. They were driving around in
unarmored vehicles, some of them without doors. Some of the
soldiers didn't even have protective vests. And I kept
hearing the same excuse for reservists, for National Guard
units: the active component was taking the equipment as a
priority. We can't get it over here.

And then layer
on top of that, there was no personnel replacement system
for the Reserves and the National Guard. So if I lost a
soldier to an illness, a nervous breakdown, a battle injury,
whatever it might be, I operated one short, or ten short, or
thirty short, or sixty short. I didn't mobilize these units.
I didn't deploy these units. I joined them in theater. The
responsibility for how those units were deployed and how
they were ill-prepared rests with the senior level of
leadership in the military.

MC: And when you say
"senior level," who do you mean?

JK: I mean the Chief
of the Army Reserves, the Chief of the National Guard here,
who is the only general officer in all of this who has
admitted that they had no idea. I think it was General
Bloom, he's a three-star. I don't even know if he still is
Chief of the National Guard. But he admitted that they had
no idea that the units were going to be deployed for
anything, the length of time that it started to appear that
they were going to be deployed. So they pushed them out of
the mobilization stations, because they knew that the units
would somehow manage once they got into Iraq. So, knowing
that they were ill-equipped and ill-prepared, they pushed
them out anyway, because those two three-stars wanted their
fifteen minutes of fame, I suppose.

But Bloom, at
least, stepped up to the plate and took responsibility.
Helmsley, who allowed these units to deploy, who came up
with this harebrained scheme about cross-welling soldiers
and serving with complete strangers - he has never taken
responsibility for anything. And neither has the Pentagon.

More than a year ago, that brave soldier stood up and
said to Rumsfeld, "Why don't we have the right equipment?
Why are we still going out with unarmored vehicles?"
Rumsfeld made that infamous comment that was: you go to war
with the units that you have, not necessarily the ones you
want. Well, how about a slap in the face? But he's never
been held accountable for that.

And the man, the
officer who stopped requests for armored vehicles and
stopped requests for protective vests to be prioritized is
now the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Cody. He's a
four-star. He was a three-star. He was in charge of
logistics, and he disapproved any additional requests for
vehicles or protective equipment for our soldiers. He was
promoted. He is a four-star, and he is the Chief of Staff of
the Army today.

That's how Rumsfeld and the Pentagon
reward people who are in agreement with them. I don't know
how else to say it. Shinseki, who was telling Rumsfeld the
truth - he was retired.

Anybody who confronts this
Administration or Rumsfeld or the Pentagon with a true
assessment, they find themselves either out of a job, out of
their positions, fired, relieved or chastised. Their career
comes to an end.

MC: What is your current status?

JK: I am retired from the military.

MC: You wrote in
an e-mail: "The techniques are a clear departure from what
soldiers are taught and understand, the techniques that were
directed by the highest level of this Administration." By
that, you mean all the way up to the Oval Office?

JK:
I mean all the way up to Cheney. I don't know the workings
of how it gets up there. But I would think that, very
similar to any other big corporation or the military, that
if you have a deputy - or a Vice President, in this case -
and he is making decisions or approvals, then maybe by
default you will say, "If I didn't know, I should have
known," or "I did know." Because he's your Vice President.
Or he is the Vice President. Or he is the Secretary of
Defense. I don't know what they are telling the President.
And I don't care. He's the President, and he's supposed to
know what's going on in this Administration, and honestly,
sometimes it doesn't seem like he does.

MC: How are
the techniques a clear departure from what soldiers are
taught and understand?

JK: Well, I can tell you that
Military Police soldiers (I don't care what component
they're from: National Guard, Reserve or active duty) - in
fact, when it comes to the Geneva Conventions and fair and
humane treatment of prisoners, Reserve and National Guard
units are better, because it is a mission. A prisoner of war
operation and internment resettlement and refugee operations
- it was never a mission that the active component wanted to
embrace. They wanted the National Guard and the Reserve
Units to take those missions. They thought it was an insult
to them to have to do those kinds of missions. So in my
opinion, the reservists and the National Guard Units were
better equipped, better trained, and fully aware of the
Geneva Conventions and the requirements of how to treat
prisoners of war fairly and humanely.

They changed
the mission. They assigned a new detention mission to the
800th MP brigade and relocated most of the units from the
prisoner of war camp, which was winding down from May
onwards, and moved them, pushed them up into Iraq, to
perform this new mission of detention operations. We were
told - I was told - that it was going to be assisting
Bremer's headquarters, the Coalition Provisional Authority,
with restoring prisons and jails and getting the Iraqi
prisoners back under lock and key because they were
disrupting operations, etc. etc.

So despite the fact
that Iraqi criminals - detention operations - are different
from prisoner of war operations (they have a different mind
set of a criminal, if you will), the MPs were assigned this
mission. There was absolutely no discussion whatsoever to
see if the units were properly equipped, if they had
appropriate training. Twice I approached the two-star, a guy
by the name of Cruser [sp?], he's a Major General Reservist.
Twice I went to him and I said, "This is not our mission."
And he said to me, as almost to dismiss me out of his
office, he said, "Yes, I know Janis, but you're the closest
we've got from detention MP, so you guys have the mission."
Not, you know, we don't have the right equipment; not, we
don't have the right training, we don't have the right
background. He didn't care.

MC: You said that Iraqi
detention is different than POWs, that there's a criminal
mind set. Could you explain it a little bit more?

JK:
Well, when you have prisoner of war operations or refugee
resettlement operations, and there's a war going on,
prisoners of war know and understand, and they see it
exhibited by the military police soldiers, that they are
going to be treated fairly and humanely, and that the enemy
- the people detaining them - are not going to be living in
high-rise hotels while they're in these prison camps.
Everybody they see - the MPs and the soldiers who are
guarding them - are living at the same level that they are.
So if there's a ration of water of two liters a day, the
prisoners get the same ration that the soldiers get. If
they're living in outside tents, the soldiers are likewise
living in outside tents and cow towns. There's no air
conditioning. There is no laundry service. There are no
rental cars. And prisoners of war understand that. They know
that they are only going to be held as combatants until the
war is over, so their mind set is different. They are
generally under control.

Nobody likes to be held
against their will. But enemy combatants understand that, in
the course of war, if they're captured, then they're held in
a prisoner of war camp and will be treated humanely until
the war is over and then they can go home. That's how
prisoner of war operations work, and that's the mind set, I
would say, of an average soldier, pretty much, and 75
percent of the free world.

Iraqi criminals, on the
other hand, if they're violent criminals - whether it was
under Saddam or now under US forces control - they might
remain in jail for the rest of their lives. So they have 24
hours a day, 7 days a week to plot and to plan and to design
ways to escape, ways to harass their keepers, ways to make
life miserable for the MPs or the individuals who are
detaining them.

The only reason we had any kind of
control - I will tell you this flat out, up front - the only
reason we had any kind of control in any of our prison
facilities, Abu Ghraib aside, was because the MPs were
taking the initiative and finding ways to accommodate the
prisoners. It wasn't because of the fine security of the
prison facility. It was because the prisoners knew that the
MPs were doing everything they could, everything in their
power, to make life more acceptable for them while they were
spending their days and nights incarcerated.

We had
civilian so-called experts - contractors - under the
Coalition Provisional Authority, who worked under the
Ministry of Justice. Now these prison experts all had
experience as wardens or as directors for prisons in the
United States.

MC: Were some of them former US
Special Forces?

JK: No, they were not. They were all
civilians. There was only one of them who was retired from
the military, and he was actually retired as a Military
Police officer. But it's just incredible that these three
contractors that they brought over were hired by the Justice
Department in Washington, and it was the same Justice
Department - there aren't two separate entities - it was the
same Justice Department that, between 30 and 60 days before
hiring these people to come to Baghdad, the same Justice
Department had fired them from their positions in the Utah
Corrections Facility for prisoner abuse.

And I didn't
know that when we were there. Nobody bothered to tell us
that. But we were told that we were going to go up to
Baghdad, we were going to relocate the headquarters up to
Baghdad to assist the Prisons Department, under the Ministry
of Justice, with this restoration of jails and prisons.
Well, we got up there and there were three of them and one
director. And they were looking at 121 different jails for
us to run and operate. And I told them I don't have that
many MPs! I couldn't put 3 MPs in each one of those
facilities and run them. We have to find the biggest
facilities, and that's what they did. They eventually
identified, I think they identified, 15 or 18 and we settled
on 15 or 16.

MC: Why did they bring these civilian
contractors? Why do you think they brought them over?

JK: Well, at that time, everybody was under the impression
that the Coalition Provisional Authority was being run under
the auspices of the State Department, and that the Iraqi
Detention Operation was a function that would eventually be
turned over to the Iraqis.

Well, that may have been
true in some back room plan, that people had an idea that
was going to be in place. But there was no plan. Because
normally, prison operations and jail operations come with
the restoration of peace and security. And that comes with a
sustainment operation that follows combat operations. So on
a backward timeline, when the war was declared over on the
aircraft carrier, then sustainment operations - engineers,
civilian contractors, military police, military police
organizations - all those organizations kind of kick into
high gear to get things moving down the same road. Well
there was no sustainment plan. And I can tell you, Marjorie,
my opinion is that there was no sustainment plan because, by
that time, there were a lot of contractors - US contractors
exclusively - who realized they could make a lot of money in
Iraq.

MC: How did the enlisted soldiers feel about
the contractors getting these fat paychecks?

JK: My
soldiers were saying, I heard this often: "Ma'am, I want to
get out of the Army and come back over here. I could be
making five times the money that I'm making as a soldier.
And these guys never go out and do anything. We're doing all
the work, and they're drawing all the pay!" I heard it a
dozen times a week from every level of soldier, every rank,
in every one of my units. They could see it. They knew what
was going on. Here's these three contractors who are
supposed to restore the prison system with the help of the
military, and they never - I don't want to say never - they
hardly leave the confines of the Coalition Provisional
Authority.

MC: Now did they play a role in the
interrogations?

JK: No, they did not. The
interrogations were separate and apart from Iraqi detention
operations. The only role they played was, they were
restoring Abu Ghraib. They were using funds from the
Coalition Provisional Authority to restore the cells out at
Abu Ghraib.

MC: So who was in charge of the
interrogations at Abu Ghraib?

JK: The Military
Intelligence.

MC: And you were reprimanded and
demoted for failing to supervise the staff at Abu Ghraib,
and you've said you were a scapegoat?

JK: Right.

MC: What do you mean by that?

JK: Well, I have to
refer to a timeline. Miller comes, we have Abu Ghraib, and
Abu Ghraib was a pile of rubble the first time I saw it. The
only advantage of Abu Ghraib, the only advantage, was this
20-foot high retaining wall around the ground, acres and
acres of the grounds of Abu Ghraib. So we had that as a
security, first line of defense. But everything inside the
prison at that time had been looted. Electrical systems,
water systems, infrastructure, doors were gone. Blocks of
concrete were removed from the interior section, the
interior cells.

But I had a Company Commander who was
commanding an MP unit out there, and he told me in July,
"Ma'am, if you get us the resources we can at least hold
prisoners here until the other facilities are restored." So
there was great opposition to that, because of the history
of Abu Ghraib. But we proceeded with the encouragement and
the support, to a limited extent, from Ambassador Bremer.
Because we needed some place to put these Iraqi criminals
that the divisions were policing in the course of their
operations and attempted to get sustainment operations
underway, throughout Iraq. So in August, the divisions were
directed to undertake these - let me back up. At Abu Ghraib
during July and the beginning of August 2003, we were
holding several hundred prisoners.

MC: Were these
prisoners of war?

JK: No, these were Iraqi criminals,
because the war was over. So when the President declared the
war over, there are no more prisoners of war. What we were
policing then were Iraqi criminals.

MC: Had they all
been arrested for crimes?

JK: Yes, they were. But
some of them, most of them, the vast majority of them were
minor crimes. They were missing curfew. They were subjected
to a random inspection and a weapon was found in their
trunks, they were looting, dealing gasoline, whatever. But
they were minor crimes, nonviolent crimes, the majority of
them.

In October and November, 2002, Saddam and his
sons opened all of the jails and all of the prisons and
released all of the prisoners to cause chaos as the
Coalition advanced to Baghdad. And they did. These
criminals, these criminal elements, did wreak havoc. So it
was not unusual, when the divisions were out doing their
operations or manning a checkpoint, that they would find a
minor crime, minor criminals. And then, when they were
turned over, sometimes the prisoners would even admit that
they had been held under Saddam. In all the thousands of
prisoners that were turned over to our control, we only had
one who came in with a prison record folded neatly in his
wallet. Because they're smart enough to not say, "Oh, I was
a prisoner, I was a murderer, and I was being held for life
under Saddam, so you got me." You know, they were all, every
prisoner was innocent.

MC: So the prisoners who were
being tortured or abused at Abu Ghraib - were they all
convicted criminals?

JK: No, because up until the mid
part of August or the third week of August, 2003, I would
say 95 percent of our prisoner population were Iraqi
criminals, and the majority of them were nonviolent
criminals. Then, directed by the CJTF-7, the divisions
undertook these aggressive raids and these operations
targeting specific individuals who were either terrorists,
suspected terrorists, or known associates of terrorists. And
they were called "security detainees." This is a new
category of prisoner. So they were bringing them into Abu
Ghraib, and again, no coordination with the commander (me)
or my battalion commander out at Abu Ghraib. They were just
flooding Abu Ghraib every night from the end of August
onward with 15 prisoners, 30 prisoners, 8 prisoners, 60
prisoners, whatever it would be. So the population exploded
from what it was, about 1200 at the end of August. In
September and October we took in at least equal that number.
So by the end of September, we had more than 3,000
prisoners. And by the end of October, we had over 6,000
prisoners. And the CJTF-7 headquarters did not care if we
had food for the prisoners, if we had accommodations for the
prisoners, if we had jumpsuits for the prisoners or
anything.

But the most pronounced difference was when
Miller came to visit. He came right after Rumsfeld's visit.
Miller was there the next day. And he stayed for about ten
days to work with the Military Intelligence commander, the
Military Intelligence staff officer, General Fast, and the
commander of the Military Intelligence committee, Colonel
Pappas.

And he said that he was going to use a
template from Guantánamo Bay to "Gitmo-ize" the operations
out at Abu Ghraib. He didn't spend much time with me, but he
wanted to see me before he went down to brief General
Sanchez when he was getting ready to leave. And that was
when he was using these strong-arm techniques with me. He
said, "Look, we can do this my way or we can do this the
hard way." I mean, first of all, we're on the same side! And
he knew, and I said to him, "Sir, I don't know who told you
I was going to be difficult. What I'm doing is telling you
Abu Ghraib is not mine to give to you. It belongs to
Ambassador Bremer. It is going to be turned over to the
Iraqis." He said, "No, it is not. I want that facility and
Rick Sanchez said I can have any facility I want."

So, I mean, I was telling him the truth. Miller obviously
had the full authority of somebody, you know, likely Cambone
or Rumsfeld in Washington, DC. And right after, during
Miller's visit, Colonel Pappas, the MI Brigade Commander,
asked me if he could have full control of Cellblock 1-A
because all of the people being held in there were really
these security detainees.

The prisons experts down at
Coalition Provisional Authority objected because it had been
the CPA money that had restored those jail cells. I
explained that these were higher-value guys and that they
needed to be segregated. So they said okay. And we turned
the Cellblock 1-A over to Colonel Pappas. And then shortly
after that, within a week, they asked for Cellblock 1-B. And
Miller probably coached ... I don't know. I do know that
Miller had this harebrained idea that he was going to bring
in these milvans - you know what milvans are?

MC: No.

JK: Milvans are all metal and they're picked up at a
port. Usually, they're either put on the back of a big
tractor or trailer truck. Sometimes you'll see these heavy
trains at the port lifting up these metal boxes. Those are
the equivalent of milvans. You can ship them and then
they're picked up with a moving device, wherever they're
going to.

So Miller had this idea that they could
import hundreds, if not thousands, of these milvans, modify
them with bars and such, and make them individual prison
cells, similar to what they had done down at Guantánamo Bay,
apparently.

So I said to General Miller - just on
that point alone - I said, "Look sir, we can't even get
building materials up here, basically or efficiently. Where
do you think they're going to import all these milvans and
get them down here to Abu Ghraib?" He said, "It's no
problem. We'll use Turkey, we'll use Jordan. We have the
answer." Okay. Well, there's not one milvan that's been
shipped to Abu Ghraib even to this day.

Nonetheless,
he wasn't there, and he didn't have, like so many of these
people ... General Cody can sit in Washington, DC now, as
the Chief of Staff of the Army and can pontificate about how
it should be. But he wasn't there. He was not in the middle
of this disaster and this chaos. And the efforts of the
Military Police soldiers, they were just so incredible,
because every one of our facilities was undermanned,
ill-protected, and managed by the seat of their pants.

MC: Taguba suggested that you didn't pay sufficient
attention to what was going on under your command. But you
said you were waved off by Military Intelligence and the
CIA. Who waved you off?

JK: General Miller did first,
and then General Fast, as his representative, even though
General Miller has claimed repeatedly and under sworn
testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee that he
was simply an advisor in Iraq; he had no authority to direct
anybody to make changes or to do anything differently.

However, when he left, Colonel Pappas, General Sanchez and
the Provo Marshall for General Sanchez, I think - a guy by
the name of, he was a Colonel, his name was Sanwalt [sp?] -
they were copying, cc-ing, General Miller on all the reports
of anything to do with interrogation or detention
operations. So if he was just an advisor, why were they
keeping him so much in the loop? And then when I went to
General Fast, after I heard that the prison had been turned
over to the Military Intelligence brigade for complete
command and control ---

MC: Who turned it over to the
Military Intelligence?

JK: General Fast went to the
Operations Section of the headquarters, CJTF-7, and told
them to cut an order transferring control of the prisons
from the Military Police to the Military Intelligence. There
was no coordination with me or Colonel Pappas. There was no
discussion about chain of command or anything else. General
Fast, who was not a commander, ordered them to do it in the
Operations Section at Sanchez's headquarters, and they did
it. And they cut an order and transferred the prison.

MC: And now, who waved you off? When were you waved off?

JK: When I found out, I wasn't even in Iraq at the time. And
when I came back they told me that the prison was
transferred under the control of the Military Intelligence.
So I went to Sanchez first, and his deputy went in to tell
General Sanchez that I was there and I needed to see him,
and the subject was the transfer of the prison. General
Sanchez would not see me, but he told his deputy or his - I
think it was his SGS or his executive officer - he was a
full colonel - he told me to go see General Fast, that she
had the details. So I went to General Fast, and General Fast
pointed to the order. Pointed to the order! Held it up,
pointed to the order and said it's a done deal.

MC:
So then you were not allowed to go to that cellblock?

JK: No, there was never a restriction on me going to that
cellblock or anywhere else at Abu Ghraib, ever. I was not
allowed to go to Abu Ghraib or anywhere else during the
hours of darkness. Nobody was allowed to; the roads were too
dangerous. We were just starting to see the beginnings of
these roadside bombs and IEDs and everything. So the
headquarters said unless it was life-threatening and they
gave permission, there was no travel during the hours or
darkness.

MC: And that's when the torture went on?

JK: And that's when the torture was taking place,
right.

MC: So if you had wanted to go at night, you
couldn't have done it?

JK: Right. That's correct.

MC: When did you find out that this torture was going on?

JK: Well, I really didn't find out - I found out that
there was an investigation, and I found out about that, not
from General Sanchez, not from General Fast, not from
anybody at the headquarters. I found out from the Commander
of the Criminal Investigation Division - a guy by the name
of Marcelo. He was a full Colonel. And he sent me an e-mail.
We had another mission that was close to the Iranian border
and I was up there. It was about an hour and forty-five
minutes outside Baghdad, two hours outside of Baghdad. So I
opened my e-mail when I came back from a meeting with the
leadership element of this group up there, and it was close
to midnight. I opened the e-mail and I said, "What is this
all about?" And the e-mail said, "Ma'am, just want to let
you know I'm about to go in and brief the CG on the progress
of the investigation out at Abu Ghraib. This is the one
involving allegations of abuse and the pictures." That was
it.

MC: That was the first you heard?

JK: That
was the first I heard, and that was on the twelfth of
January of 2004. That was the first I heard. I left the next
morning, I didn't know anything about it. I asked my aide, I
asked my Operations Officer, and nobody knew anything about
it, and everybody was equally shocked, stunned. So we left
at daybreak the next morning and drove back into Baghdad and
went right out to Abu Ghraib. And we tried to talk to some
of the people out there who would have known.

Well,
all of the people who worked the night shift were already
removed from their positions out there and were taken over
to the headquarters, the CJTF-7 headquarters. I was never
allowed to speak to them. I never exchanged a word with
them, because I was told by Colonel Warren, the JAG officer
for General Sanchez, that they weren't assigned to me, that
they were not under my control, and I really had no right to
see them.

The people who were working in Cellblock
1-A at the time that I went out to Abu Ghraib didn't know
anything about it. They were completely in the dark about
anything. I said, "What's this about photographs?" And the
sergeant said to me, "Ma'am, we've heard something about
photographs, but I have no idea. Nobody has any details, and
Ma'am, if anybody knows, nobody is talking." I said, "Okay,
let me see the logs. Let me see the books." He said, "They
took everything. The Criminal Investigation division took
everything." I said, "Well, what do you have?" and he
pointed to this pole right outside the little office that
they were using, and he said, "Well, they left this."

It was a memorandum signed by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld,
authorizing a short list, maybe 6 or 8 techniques: use of
dogs; stress positions; loud music; deprivation of food;
keeping the lights on, those kinds of things. And then a
handwritten message over to the side that appeared to be the
same handwriting as the signature, and that signature was
Secretary Rumsfeld's. And it said, "Make sure this happens,"
with two exclamation points. And that was the only thing
that they had. Everything else had been confiscated.

So I tried to get information. I talked to Colonel Pappas. I
talked to the Battalion Commander. I talked to the chain of
command, the Military Police chain of command. Nobody knew
anything, nobody - at least, that's what they were claiming.
The Company Commander, Captain Reese, was tearful in my
office and repeatedly told me he knew nothing about it, knew
nothing about it.

But in a plea bargain, later on,
after Taguba, Captain Reese said that not only did he know
about it, but he was told not to report it to his chain of
command, and he was told that by Colonel Pappas. And he
claimed that he saw General Sanchez out there on several
occasions witnessing the torture of some of the security
detainees.

So, the first time I even got any kind of
clarification on what these photographs were was the 23rd of
January. The criminal investigator, Colonel Marcelo, came
into my office. It was about eight o'clock at night, nine
o'clock at night. And he called me and he was asking if I
was there, would I be there, and I said yes. He said, I have
some photographs I want to show you.

So when I saw
the pictures I was floored. Really, the world was spinning
out of control when I saw those pictures, because it was so
far beyond and outside of what I imagined. I thought that
maybe some soldiers had taken some pictures of prisoners
behind barbed wire or in their cell or something like that.
I couldn't imagine anything like what I saw in those
photographs.

So then Colonel Marcelo said me, "Ma'am,
I'm supposed to tell you after you see the photographs that
General Sanchez wants to see you in his office." So I went
over to see him, and he, I told him, you know, before I even
saw the photographs, I was preparing words to say in a press
conference - to be up front, to be honest about this, that
an investigation is ongoing and there are some allegations
of detainee abuse.

Well, he said, "No, absolutely
not. You are not to discuss this with anyone." And I should
have known then, and I know that Sanchez was hopeful for a
four-star promotion even then, in January of 2004. And I
thought that it had probably most to do with the election
coming up in November of 2004, and that this could really
move the Administration out of the White House if it was
exploited. So naively, I just thought, you know, they're
going to let this investigation go and they're going to
handle it the way it should be handled.

MC: Do you
think the investigations that have taken place so far have
uncovered the truth about this torture and who is
responsible?

JK: Absolutely not. The truth has been
uncovered, but it's been suffocated and it has not been
released with the results of the investigation. You know,
they can say that, McClellan and Rumsfeld can get up on
their high horse and say that there've been no fewer than 15
investigations that were conducted. But every one of those
investigations is under the control of the Secretary of
Defense. And every one of those investigations is run and
led by a person who can lose their job under Rumsfeld's
fist.

We're never going to know the truth until they
do an independent commission or look into this
independently. I don't know if this has to be a commission.
I don't know what the term is. But I do know that we never
would have known the truth about 9/11 if they didn't appoint
an independent commission. And this thing, this thing is not
about what happened in Cellblock 1-A on a night shift. And
it is certainly not about seven reservists who went crazy
one night. This is about instructions delivered with full
authority and knowledge of the Secretary of Defense and
probably Cheney. I don't know if the President was involved
or not. I don't care. All I know is, those instructions were
communicated from the Secretary of Defense's office, from
the Pentagon, through Cambone, through Miller, to Abu
Ghraib.

And those civilian contractors who were
imported were not subjected to the same Uniform Code of
Military Justice discipline as the soldiers. They were
cleared, removed from the face of the earth, and seven
soldiers are being held responsible. It was grossly unfair.

MC: Now why do you think the Administration is
resisting an independent investigation if it has nothing to
hide?

JK: Well, for the same reason that when they
started to make noise a couple of weeks ago - McCain, I
think, recommended developing a bill or was recommending a
bill that would define the limits of how to interview
prisoners, would require an international database so family
members would know where their loved ones or relatives were
being held. And Cheney said he would recommend to the
President that any bill that would limit his ability to
extract information from terrorists, he would recommend
disapproval. And the President has said that he would
disapprove any such bill. And it's consistent with this
Administration's reluctance to get to the truth, because it
will reveal that they knew that this was designed at their
level and started from the memo under Gonzales and Hayes, I
think, is it Hayes?

MC: Yes, Hayes.

JK: And
Cambone and all of these people have literally taken control
of the inner workings of this Administration. It's just
insane that - does anybody think that Lynndie England came
to Iraq with a dog collar and a dog leash, with the idea of
putting one around the prisoner's neck, and having a
photograph taken? They were using these photographs to get -
to cut to the chase, for lack of a better expression. The
plan was to use these photographs to show newly-arriving
prisoners: hey, start to talk or tomorrow you're on the
bottom of the pile.

This is wrong to say that this
was torture and abuse going on in Cellblock 1-A. It was
certainly humiliating to be photographed in such a manner; I
don't disagree with that at all. I'm not trying to justify
it. But there were interrogation facilities outside of
Cellblock 1-A and B - separate facilities, where the actual
interrogations took place. And this Administration surely
does not want the details of what went on in those
interrogation facilities to be known by the rest of the
world.

MC: Do you think the CIA is involved? Did you
have any contact with the CIA at all, in terms of their
involvement with the interrogations?

JK: Marjorie, I
have to tell you that from July onward, even up until
December, I wouldn't say regularly, but it was often, that I
encountered somebody from the Task Force, from the CIA, from
Special Operations, and by and large, they were
professionals. They were absolutely the consummate
professionals.

Now I don't know if they ran separate
facilities, and I don't know what techniques they use. I do
know that when they determined that somebody they were
holding in one of their facilities no longer had any value
and they wanted to turn them over to us, at Abu Ghraib, most
likely, they turned them over with full medical records.
They turned them over with a whole file of interviews and
interrogations, and they turned them over in relatively good
health, particularly given the situation. So I think that -
this is only my conclusion - but I think that techniques in
the right and responsible hands are used appropriately. I
mean, I never saw anybody under the control of the Task
Force or under the control of the CIA who came in bruised,
bloody, beaten, and, you know, stitched together.
Occasionally we did see the aftermath of a gunshot wound,
but these were higher-value detainees, if there was
cross-fire or if there was a bullet, but they treated those
kind of wounds. That would be my impression.

However,
these same techniques or suggestions of aggressive
techniques that were designed, in my opinion - again, I
don't know this first-hand - but all of these reports now
would indicate that these techniques were designed and
tested and implemented down at Guantánamo Bay and in
Afghanistan. And when you take those same techniques and put
them in the hands of irresponsible and non-accountable
people, like these civilian contractors were, you are
combining lethal ingredients. And what happens? You get
civilian contractors who have a playground, and they get out
of control. And unfortunately, at Abu Ghraib they suck the
military into that same playground. There's no doubt in my
mind that they ordered these things to be done.

MC:
Who is "they?"

JK: They being the civilian
contractors - Titan, CACI. The majority of those contractors
were either in Guantánamo Bay or Afghanistan prior to being
sent to Abu Ghraib. There were a lot of translators who were
working for Titan. Some of them were locally hired, some of
them were brought in from the United States. And they were
given an opportunity to upgrade their positions to be
interrogators - without any kind of formal training
whatsoever. So now you have a deadly mix. You have people
who have been exposed and who have used these techniques
first-hand in other locations. They know that there is no
supervision or control. They have been directed, using
whatever words, to get Saddam, get the information and get
these prisoners to start talking, use more aggressive
techniques. So you have allowed people who have no
responsibility whatsoever to use techniques that were
originally, perhaps originally designed and used by very
experienced hands. And it got out of control. It clearly got
out of control.

And the reason I didn't know about it
at all is because Sanchez and Fast and that whole operation
under Miller - whether he was there or not, he was directing
it from Guantánamo Bay and Cambone was directing it from
Washington, DC - they didn't want Janis Karpinski anywhere
near those operations. Because they knew from people talking
about me, from my record, from my past performances, that I
would not have tolerated anything like what was going on in
Cellblock 1-A or B. I would not have.

If I had known,
if I had heard from a prisoner, if I had heard from an MP,
if I had heard from a soldier, if anybody had suggested such
a thing, I would have raised the issue. I would have
screamed at the top of my lungs until I got somebody to pay
attention that this was going on out there. Likely I would
have still been held accountable, because they were looking
for a scapegoat all along. And I think they found one in me
because they could very easily say, "Well, this is a
reservist who had Reserve soldiers, and they were just out
of control."

You know, let's tell the truth here. I'm
at least as capable a leader as anybody else in the Army.
And I have worked harder and taken the toughest assignments
and proved my capabilities in those assignments throughout
my career. But Miller wanted to make it appear that I didn't
have the same qualifications because I was a reservist -
that these seven soldiers were, you know, out of control on
the night shift - because they were reservists.

No,
despite the failures of the Administration and the Pentagon
to deploy these soldiers with the right equipment and the
right training and assign the right mission, these soldiers
were doing a great job. In 17 facilities, more than 40,000
prisoners throughout the time, the only photographs and
allegations of abuse were in two cellblocks under the
control of the Military Intelligence command and designed
and incorporated by General Miller during and following his
visit to Iraq.

Now how did he cover all that up?
Well, guess where he got assigned after he left Guantánamo
Bay? He went back to Iraq to be in charge of not only the
detention operations but in charge of the interrogation
operations as well, at Abu Ghraib and at the high-value
detention facility. As far as I know, they were the only two
facilities where there higher-value detainees are being
held.

MC: Where was that facility, that higher-value
detention facility?

JK: It was in Baghdad.

MC:
And is he still there?

JK: No, Miller left. He was
there from July of 2004 until December, or January of 2005,
and then he went to the Pentagon. I think he went in March,
actually. Maybe it was March of 2004 through March of 2005.
And then when he left Iraq, he was assigned to the Pentagon.
And that's where he is today. He's the only one who hasn't
been promoted in all of this. But Colonel Warren was fully
aware of all this, and in a sworn statement to one of the
soldier's defense counsel, he said that General Karpinski
was not aware of any of this because there were measures put
in place to prevent her from knowing about any of this.

MC: Who said that?

JK: That was Colonel Warren, the
JAG Officer CJ Task Force. He has been recommended for
promotion to one-star.

MC: And Sanchez is being
recommended for promotion too, right?

JK: I'm not
aware of that. But that doesn't surprise me. I know Rumsfeld
has said all along that he thinks that Sanchez is an
exceptional officer and should be recommended.

MC:
And even though this high-level military investigation
recommended that Miller be reprimanded, the Army General
rejected the recommendation, is that right?

JK: The
Commander of SOUTHCOM rejected the recommendation. Miller
has never been reprimanded, not for anything down in
Guantánamo Bay.

There was a Captain who was in
Afghanistan. She was a Lieutenant at the time, Carolyn
Woods. And she was brought over specifically by Fast. Fast
recommended her to Miller. Miller brought her over to Iraq
specifically to run the interrogation operation. She was
linked to those deaths in Afghanistan, where the
interrogators were under her control, and she was promoted
to Captain. Where is she? She is at the MI school, under
General Fast.

I mean there's a ton of information,
and there's extenuating, not circumstances, but these units
were deployed - the Reserve and National Guard units were
deployed - with the full understanding, they had orders for
179 days. They were briefed at the mobilization station and
deployed with the full understanding that they would be home
before the 179 days even expired.

So without any
notification whatsoever, without any warning from the Chief
of the Army Reserves or anybody else in the Reserve
component, they were extended 365 days, just like everybody
else in the theater.

However, when you extend an
active-component soldier past six months - whether that was
their expectation or not - when you extend them, their
families are not at risk, because their ID cards are still
current, their medical and dental benefits stay current,
their housing remains with them, their pay continues.

Reserves and National Guard soldiers rely completely on the
orders that they are carrying in their pocket. So they had
orders for a 179-day deployment. And when they were extended
... it's not like it is now; the Internet was not available.
They didn't have opportunities to call home. Nobody had a
cell phone, of course, that worked from over there or
anything. So their first concern was for their families. You
know, our orders are going to expire and okay, they're
telling us that we're going to get an extension eventually
but our families will not have ID cards, they will not have
medical benefits, they will not have dental benefits.
They're going to be kicked out of their housing, for those
who are living on base. They were concerned about the
welfare of their families. And there was no way to get
notification to them.

So it's different. There is a
different standard. Somebody waved the magic wand and said,
"Let's extend everybody for 365 days because this war is
going to go on a lot longer than we thought."

And in
my little corner of the world and my exposure down at the
Coalition Provisional Authority, I saw corruption like I've
never seen before - millions of dollars just being pocketed
by contractors. Everything was on a cash basis at the time.
You take a request down - literally, you take a request to
the Finance Office. If the Pay Officer recognized your face
and you were asking for $450,000 to pay a contractor for
work, they would pay you in cash: $450,000. Out of control.

And then, Marjorie, in March or May of this year,
when Admiral Church presented his investigation findings, he
concluded that the Taguba Report was sound. And McCain -
Senator Levin said, "Did you interview these individuals?
Did you interview Colonel Pappas? Did you interview General
Karpinski?" And of course he said no. He took the Taguba
Report and relied heavily on that. And McCain said that the
Taguba Report has been proven to be flawed and to be
incomplete. Did you interview Ambassador Bremer? And Admiral
Church said well, no, because I was directed to do this
investigation by the Secretary of Defense and it was limited
to the Department of Defense units. And the Coalition
Provisional Authority and Ambassador Bremer all work for the
State Department. And Senator McCain said, "Excuse me,
Admiral, but you're wrong. The Coalition Provisional
Authority and Ambassador Bremer worked for the Secretary of
Defense."

MC: He didn't know that?

JK: He
didn't know that. And neither did we when we were there.
Everybody believed that there was a balance between the
military and the State Department, and that Ambassador
Bremer was working for Colin Powell. And that is untrue.

So now today, 2005, I understand why Bremer fired the whole
Iraqi army - because he was working for the Secretary of
Defense. There was no State Department influence. There was
no balance. It was exclusively under the control of
Rumsfeld. And there were contractors who were coming in
there, hired. It's an excellent question, how the soldiers
felt about these contractors. The security guys, the
bodyguards, and the security firms that were hired to
provide security for visiting dignitaries or Congressional
delegations - they were all making a minimum of $300 a day.
$300 a day. And never left the Green Zone. They escorted the
convoys to the front gate, and then the Military Police or
the military units would pick up the responsibility from the
gate of the Green Zone out. And here you have soldiers who
are now responsible for the lives of these delegations, and
some of them are making $3,000 a month.

MC: Do you
think that the media is really bringing the truth to the
people?

JK: You have to search for the truth. And it
shouldn't be that way. It should be reported as truth and
not exploited to the advantage of whatever the direction
that that outlet is going.

I know those reporters
John Barry and Isikoff from Newsweek, and I was shocked when
they withdrew that report about the Koran at Guantánamo Bay.
I was sure it was true, and I thought, "Who got to them?"
They never would have been, you know, half-assed reporting,
excuse my expression. You know, I thought, "My gosh, there
is no truthful outlet any more."

And why are the
American people turning a deaf ear to this? We had 17
Marines killed over the course of the last three days, less
than 72 hours. And there's still people in Washington that
get on, especially Sunday mornings, and they get on these
news or these debate programs and they say, "Well it's only
1800 lives so far" - Only! Only! You know, how dare you say
that!

I don't know what the solution is. I'm not an
elected official, but I was there. And it was better when we
were there than it is now, because they have, whether
consciously or unconsciously or just out of ineptness, they
have approached this insurgency with the wrong idea.

General Casey, you know, getting on the news and saying,
"Well, if everything continues on track we'll be able to
start a troop draw-down next March." What exactly are these
people smoking?

MC: You don't think that's a public
relations ploy to get the Republicans in the midterm
elections? And how are they going to maintain their 14
permanent bases in Iraq if they pull troops out? They just
can't do that.

JK: Right. And how is that being
proven? Well, the insurgents are now responding, as they did
right after Cheney's comment that the insurgency was in its
last throes of effectiveness. Okay? And then they responded
by killing a whole bunch of people.

So now they come
back and Casey says, "Well, if everything continues on
track, we should be able to start the troop draw-down by
next Spring, early next Spring and into the Summer." And how
is the insurgency responding? It's like setting up an
explosive device and blowing 14 Marines off the face of the
earth.

It's just unbelievable, and was,
unfortunately, predictable, on the very elementary level of
planning sustainment operations. And I don't know if it was
just absolute ignorance or wishful thinking. And there is a
vast difference between them, but either one of them,
something was incorporated by the Pentagon, the Secretary of
Defense, of what they thought that, as soon as they got to
Baghdad and pulled those statues down, that everybody was
going to be coming out waving American flags and throwing
flowers? What kind of ignorance is this?

Iraq was a
huge country, and when you have people largely saying, now,
"He may have been a dictator, but we were better under
Saddam," this Administration needs to take notice. And at
some point you have to say, "Stop the train, because it's
completely derailed. How do we fix it?" But in an effort to
do that, you have to admit that you made a few mistakes, and
this Administration is not willing to admit any mistakes
whatsoever.

MC: You're writing a book. Do you have a
publisher?

JK: Yeah, Miramax. It's going to be
published in November. I didn't get any kind of
correspondence except to chastise me. When I was going out
to San Francisco to speak to the University of San
Francisco, the law school out there, that was in April, I
got a form letter from the Chief of the Army Reserves
warning me - warning me - about speaking about Abu Ghraib,
and that everything was still under investigation. Well,
shortly after I got back, I get a letter saying that he
understands that I'm writing a book and I should submit the
transcript for review.

And my lawyer responded simply
by telling him that I was a private citizen and I don't fall
under the same requirements, which he had to acknowledge,
because that's true. I'm not ignorant, and I'm not going to
reveal any classified information in anything I write, but I
don't need to, because the truth is the truth, and it
doesn't have to be classified. It is definitely staggering,
but the truth is the truth.

*************

Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is
a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive
vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US
representative to the executive committee of the American
Association of
Jurists.

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